


To Win A War

by Toxic_Waste



Series: Ripples [5]
Category: Phineas and Ferb, Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension (2011)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Parallel, Contemplated Dark Themes, During Canon, Fridge Horror, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It Basically Is Canon, Missing Scene, alternate viewpoint, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-13 02:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18459500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toxic_Waste/pseuds/Toxic_Waste
Summary: Stare hard enough into the void, and it will stare back at you. If you're not careful, soon only the void will be left. It's been there long before you, and it's going to be there long after you leave.





	1. Day Zero

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing something! And it's pre-written! So the whole thing is here and it will be posted promptly! Can you believe it! I've forgotten how good this felt. Ah. Please forgive any potential, uh, rustiness.
> 
> Well, enjoy~. I've want to do this for a good while now.
> 
> Incidentally, this story is sort of a culmination in a way? I'd recommend you read the build up stories earlier in the series before reading this, but you don't really need to, either. It's up to you. :P

Candace Flynn had still not gotten to back to safety by the time the hands on her watch hit the ‘twelve’ indicator, passing midnight and marking the start of the thirty-five-hundred-and-first day of the Oppression. NORMbot patrols in the Southwestern Sector had been unusually light for the past – well, it was going on thirteen hours now.

It was as good an opportunity as any other might be, and she’d determined that if anything was, it was worth investigating.

As far as she’d seen, though, it’d turned out to be a dud – merely a fluke of some sort in whatever system it was that directed the AI of the blasted things. Dr. Baljeet had said that as much was likely, as the Doofenchannel hadn’t contained any evidence of unusual activity of any sort, either good or bad. And the Southwestern Sector wasn’t all that important a part of the city anyway – far away from any sort of infrastructure crucial to the regime, and even farther away from the city’s center,

Still, it was not normal, and thus worth investigating, even though it had, in the end, turned out to be next to worthless anyway.

She’d kept to the shadows, the black of her bodysuit letting her blend in almost effortlessly as she slipped through the empty streets. Only twice had she passed within any risky distance of a robot patrol, and both times freezing in place, not even stirring to breathe, had been enough to let her pass undetected.

The faint disc of the sun was already struggling to be seen through the smog choking up the skies by the time she made it back to the sewer running beneath her street that the Resistance called it’s base of operations.

“Anything important, sir?” Shapiro asked, crisply saluting, as Candace arrived.

Candace shook her head. “Negative. As expected. How’s the house?”

“Nothing unusual,” the girl replied. Which was the only answer Candace would have accepted, but hearing it was a relief even so. “Johnson’s strike team reported that they’ve found a weakness in the guard patterns around the Doofen-greenhouses. They’ve begun a raid – we’re waiting for word back.”

“Greenhouses,” Candace spat the word disdainfully, picturing the hulking glass-and-metal buildings, and all the food they could produce – all the food they did produce, even. Her grip on her staff tightened just thinking about it. “Well, if they can pilfer any of his food, then it’s a mission accomplished in my book.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right.” Candace pinched the bridge of her nose, willing herself to think more clearly. “I am going to the house. You’ll keep watch. Continue monitoring the assault, Inform me immediately if anything goes awry. We can’t afford to lose another strike team over some garbage shrubbery.”

“Of course, sir. We’ll await your return.”

She saluted again as Candace turned and left the room, climbing up the ladder to the manhole cover in the street. She stopped, waiting at the top of the ladder, ear pressed against the cover, waiting until the gentle swoosh of NORMbot hoverplates passed overhead. When they’d disappeared again, it was safe to push the cover aside and creep out onto the street.

Working quickly, she returned the cover to it’s place, vaulted over the barriers surrounding her house’s yard and snuck around to the back of the house.

There, at the one bush pressed up against the leftmost wall, she stopped and sighed. There was a part of her that so badly wanted to never to have to wear the Dooferalls again – to feel their weight and the roughness of their fabric against her skin. They were encumbering and restricting and entirely unsuited to the sort of agile movement that was required to match oneself against NORMbots.

It wasn’t a choice that was hers to make even so, and she stifled a sigh, pulling the clothes out from beneath the plant. Off came the sleek, skin-tight outfit that she’d put together from discarded fabric stolen from the Doofenfactories, and on went the Dooferalls, with everything they represented weighing down more heavily on her shoulders than all the thick, heavy fabric in the world.

Candace grit her teeth and she removed her sunglasses, too, tucking them carefully in the overalls’ pocket, and at last prying aside the loose board in the wall of the house to slide her staff carefully inside, where no NORMbot would ever find it.

It was past three in the morning when she got inside. Phineas and Ferb were, thankfully, fast asleep, so there was no need to bother with their questions pestering her about where she’d been or what she’d been up to – which was a habit she both wanted them to grow out of and yet also would have been heartbroken if they had.

She had to, of course, check on her brothers before doing anything else. Shapiro’s assessment had been the correct one – lucky for the girl’s sake – and everything seemed well enough as she’d left them, with both Phineas and Ferb sound asleep, Ferb snoring and Phineas muttering unintelligible things in his sleep.

Though she might’ve smiled, she exhaled heavily and returned downstairs, stretching out on the hard couch in front of the silent television screen. And finally got the chance to close her eyes and get some rest for whatever later today might well end up holding. Until Doofenshmirtz fell, for her, there would never be any true rest, though she did still have to force herself to sleep – that need to keep herself in as peak condition as she could manage.

And though the four hours of sleep she ended up getting before her eyes popped open didn’t seem like much compared to the last two days of sleeplessness, what mattered as that she had slept – and could already tell a difference in how she felt.

It was the footsteps on the second story that’d woken her up – her brothers, of course, stirring up as they would, and the time Candace had to spend at home was limited enough as it was without wasting it sleeping when her brothers were up.

Instead, she waited, and as she’d expected, they came downstairs soon enough.

“Candace, you’re home!” Phineas exclaimed from the base of the stairs, running over to her. “When did you get home – last night? Oh, you should’ve woken us up!”

“It was late,” she replied simply. “But I’m here for now.”

“For now-” he paused, his shoulders drooping a little bit. “You’re going to leave again.”

It wasn’t even a question, really, but because it was Phineas who said it – and Ferb standing behind him – Candace still felt called upon to answer. “Yes.” Really, she’d do anything to be out of the house right now, back underground, in her bodysuit, with the weapon that had become as familiar to her as her own right hand by her side. This house was awful – as much a prison as the rest of the Tri-State Area.

Her brothers were here.

“When are you going to leave again?” he asked.

Candace shrugged. There weren’t, as far as she had been informed, any immediately pressing matters to be taken care of. Dr. Baljeet’s computer screen was burning out, but given that they would need to wait till the fifth Doofensday again to raid the floats that the garbage from the palaces was shipped out on, that was hardly a priority to worry about right now. Everything was very normal, which was never a good thing – disruption provided opportunities to slip in and strike, to keep the regime unstable, but the Resistance was still trying to cope with the loss of the Eastern strike team, essentially having lost their eyes and ears in the all-important factory district, and the alert in that district was still too high to risk insertion of a new team.

Not that they really had enough bodies to split the core group again anyway. New recruits were really what they needed, but they only proved harder and harder to come by as time went on.

“I’ll stay for a few hours.” That was all she was willing to give. She could keep her brothers safer when she wasn’t imprisoned here with them.

“Oh.” He seemed a little disappointed. “Well… Ferb and I are going to eat breakfast, but we were going to play Doofopoly afterwards. Do you think you could play with us? After we eat, of course.”

“I’m not hungry,” Candace remarked. “You split my share of the rations between you two.” As for Doofopoly, well, she ground her teeth together just contemplating the idea. “No. I’ll have things to do.” She’d said ‘a few hours’, but if they were going to play that game, then she might well cut that shorter just because. It was the only officially-allowed source of entertainment beyond what was on the Doofenchannel, but that didn’t mean she had to sit around and watch her brothers play it, either.

Someday they weren’t going to have to – she was going to make sure of that.

“Aw.” Phineas’ shoulders slumped lower, if such a thing was even possible, but he didn’t argue. “Are you sure you’re not hungry, though? You never eat your rations anymore.”

“I have enough,” she said shortly. “I’m not hungry.”

“O – okay, I guess.” He seemed down over it, but he’d get over it. It was for his own good anyway. “Dad came home last night, you know.”

Candace raised an eyebrow, faking ignorance. “Did he? That’s… nice.” She rather preferred it when the man was gone anyway. She hadn’t been opposed to the idea of him and her mother’s marriage, but she’d only been six years old at the time – and between everything else that had happened at that time (everything to do with Doofenshmirtz), she’d hardly gotten more than passingly acquainted with him anyway. He would be useless in a fight, that much she knew, and the idea of having more dead weight to haul around in the event of emergency was not one that appealed very strongly to her.

He was basically never home anyway, getting only eight hours home every seven days at the factory, the only time in which their mother could be found anywhere except holed up in the basement, and Phineas and Ferb seemed fond of him. So she dealt.

“Yeah.” Phineas hesitated, and then smiled faintly. “Well, I’m glad you’re home for a while, too. We miss you when you’re gone.” Ferb nodded silently.

“I miss you too,” she said reservedly. “But I’m here now. Go eat now – you need your strength.”

They obeyed, of course, and Candace took the opportunity to pace the floor of the house, length and breadth, of every room. Nothing was out of the ordinary – the hole in the bathroom ceiling that let in water when it rained didn’t appear to have grown larger. When she opened her brothers’ closet doors, there were markedly fewer cockroaches skittering for the darkness than last time, which was a good thing – probably less than ten, even. She just needed to get Dr. Baljeet more supplies to mix up more of that poison to keep them under control.

Which was going to be more difficult now, with the factory district missing it’s assigned team, but such was the way things worked. She’d just have to handle it herself.

Some unlucky cockroach tried to run past her, out in the room – with the flick of her leg, she ground it beneath her foot into the floorboards.

One day she’d do the same to Doofenshmirtz, too.

Her step-father came out of their parent’s room soon enough. Candace nodded briefly at him as she brushed past him in the hall, heading back to the living room. She settled herself down on the couch, flicking on the decrepit TV idly.

There was nothing on but the No Hour again, which was a good a sign as any that there was nothing stirring in patterns out of the ordinary. She couldn’t let it settle down too long like this – it would only allow the dictator more opportunity to solidify his power farther, but as the years rolled on it never became easier, either. The regime was suffocating the life out of the Tri-State Area, slowly but surely, and it was doing all it could to take the Resistance with it, too.

Candace was never going to let that happen, not while she had breath in her body and blood in her veins, but that didn’t mean the writing wasn’t already on the wall for the surviving Resistors. It was just up to them to erase it – to change the course of history.

To take Doofenshmirtz down.

Somewhere downstairs she heard the front door open and close several times. At first, the natural assumption was that it was just their step-father leaving the building, given that the train was rumbling by outside.

But then there were voices downstairs, too, louder than what was allowed the citizenry except on the state-mandated birthday celebrations for the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’. Candace knitted her brow, frowning deeply. It was only her brothers’ voices she recognized, and yet… there was something strange about them, too.

Strange meant new – and new was always bad.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she marched downstairs as quickly as possible, warning her of some impending danger which she could not yet see.

“Alright, you know the only time we’re allowed to make noise is on Doofensday, so keep it-” she stopped mid-sentence, blinking silently, staring into the room.

Four pairs of eyes stared back, two Phineases, and two Ferbs, all staring at her blankly, waiting for her to finish.

“Are there… four of you in this room?” she finally did. This was – this was not good. Scratch those few hours, there was about to be a change in plans.

“Five, counting Perry,” Phineas said – the other Phineas, the new one, the one who was not Candace’s brother.

Candace squeezed her eyes shut tight. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with already. “I see nothing,” she grunted through grit teeth. “I have plausible deniability.”

There was only one thought in her mind as she walked away. Not again. Not again. Heinz Doofenshmirtz was a strange, sad little man with a twisted mind, and Candace had long been aware of his odd obsession with multiple copies – multiple versions of people. She’d seen what happened before to these unlucky duplicates, who happened by from time to time with no explanation or reason – but who never left again, either. Wherever they were from, they weren’t used to dealing with the NORMbots, nor were they capable of surviving a Goozim’s digestive system.

It had never been an issue before. It had never involved her family before. Something had to be done, and fast. Or else the Doofenchannel was going to light up with news of these two the way it always did when duplicates showed up, and her brother’s refuge of safety wasn’t going to be safe for much longer. She would get rid of them herself if it came down to it.

Double-checking to make sure she wasn’t being watched, either by patrolling robot or by curious brothers (or doomed duplicates of said brothers), she slipped outside and back behind the house where she’d left her actual clothes those few hours ago.

Changing quickly, she stuffed the Dooferalls under the bush and retrieved her staff from its hideyhole. The walk to the sewer cover that disguised the entrance to the Resistance’s base of operations beneath the street wasn’t but a few yards distant, but for a few moments, Candace paced the yard instead.

They had to get rid of these duplicates, and had to do it fast. That was beside the question. The real issue was how. She could kill them herself and hide the bodies where they’d never be found, but that wouldn’t serve to make Doofenshmirtz or the robot patrols hunting them leave her brother’s home alone, either. And then she’d have to find some way to relocate her brothers elsewhere, because the house would never be safe again.

Perhaps a better alternative would be to bait them out, lure them into the grasp of some of the NORMbots patrolling nearby. They’d wind up dead before long there, too, but it should hopefully satisfy Doofenshmirtz’s curiousity as well.

Even that, though, wouldn’t serve to restore her brother’s biggest protection, which wasn’t her (and never had been): their anonymity. They weren’t going to be unknown for much longer, and that was an issue.

Perhaps Dr. Baljeet could feasibly interfere with the Doofenchannel in some way, preventing the airing of her brother’s faces. It would be infinitely preferable, very nearly. But no more waiting. That time was over. If she was going to salvage this situation, she had to act fast.

There was a ruined NORMbot lying on the street in front of the house, and Candace grit her teeth harder behind her sunglasses at the sight of it. Buford. The idiot still didn’t understand the concept of subtlety, did he? There was going to be no way to remove the wreckage in time, and the patrols were going to be heightened, as always when a robot was downed.

This was not the time she needed to deal with increased patrols. She was going to have his hide for this.

Slipping under the manhole cover, however, she heard voices from the end of the tunnel – the Fireside Girls, apparently conduction some sort of… something. She couldn’t quite make it all out, only Dr. Baljeet’s words at the end. “Well, we should probably ask our leader-”

“Ask your leader what?” Candace cut in. Her voice rumbled painfully in her throat, accompanied by a sudden tickling and a series of violent coughs. There was a… a bush of some sort here? That hadn’t been there before. She frowned. “Who made the topiary out of wild parsnips?! I’m allergic and it’s messing up my voice.” It had to be from the strike mission, so it was probably a good sign, but even so, she wasn’t going to stand for it being around her. Plus there was whatever Dr. Baljeet was rambling about asking her and-

“Candace, you’re the leader of the Resistance?”

Candace’s eyes widened, and for at least the thousandth time, she was intimately grateful for the smoked lenses of the sunglasses obscuring her eyes. No, no, it couldn’t be, not her brothers, not here? They couldn’t be down here!

“What are you two-” and then she stopped, because although she hadn’t even gotten the question out yet, her eyes had fallen on her brother’s duplicates and she already knew the answer. Of course. “Never mind, I’ll deal with you later,” she snapped off at her brothers, pushing past them and planting herself directly in front of the dupes. “You two!” she growled. “I’ve been spending all these years trying to keep my brothers safe and suddenly their faces are gonna be all over the Doofenchannel.” Her eyes hardened at the thought, at the knowledge of what would be necessary to undo even some of the damage these fakes had wreaked.

This was how it always happened with these duplicates, and they always ended up dead. Maybe it was for the best.

“We’re just trying to get home,” the one who looked like Phineas whined.

“And what’s stopping you?”

“Right now?” he grimaced. “Quantum physics.”

Candace rolled her eyes. “Baljeet!” However it happened, these two needed to be gone, and they needed to be gone now. Yesterday. Dead, gone home, turned into the NORMbots, it didn’t matter. They were getting away from her brothers, and they were getting away now.

Dr. Baljeet rambled something about science and dimensions. The only thing Candace heard was ‘generate eight million gigawatts’, which was… well, it wasn’t going to be easy. There was only one way to get so much power all at once, but it’d get rid of these two walking disaster magnets…

“Then we’ve got work to do,” she said briskly, grinding the end of her staff into the dirt. “Isabella, start redirecting power. Gretchen, monitor the Doofenchannel and make sure we’re not raising any alarms.” The girls acknowledged her orders, scrambling to position, and Candace’s eyes fell on Buford. Ugh. “Buford… keep resisting.”

“No.”

“...excellent.” Honestly he was dumb as a box of rocks sometimes. It was certainly times like these when Candace had to remember that he did provide muscle for the Resistance when she wasn’t around, and so there was a reason for him to stay.

Not that the other Firestorm Girls were always that much smarter either, considering what was still there that ought not have been – “and will somebody get rid of that topiary, thank you!?”

Stupid plants aside, though everything seemed to be going smoothly (as smoothly as emergency measures of this nature could go), and Candace strode over and planted herself between her brothers. This wasn’t the time to deal with them yet, but she planted a firm hand on Phineas’ shoulder nonetheless. The Doofenchannel on Gretchen’s screen was still airing the No Hour, so all was good in that regard.

“Just a little bit more,” Dr. Baljeet murmured from where he was fiddling with some green gadget-looking thing mounted on a tripod he’d rigged up. His eyes flickered back and forth between his computer screen and the thingy, and Candace watched as the counter on the screen ticked higher and higher upwards, the needle sliding deeper and deeper into the red zone. She grit her teeth.

Dr. Baljeet had better know what he’s doing.

A strange rippling suddenly broke through the air, catching Candace’s attention as a glowing green orb popped into existence beyond the operational end of the device, accompanied by a high-pitched scream of some kind.

She watched, tensing up on instinct, as the orb grew, it’s center disappearing and being replaced by hole through the thin air, through which she could see… grass? Grass, and a tree, both so green that they were clearly artificial. Nothing grew so green out in the poisoned atmosphere anymore. She gripped her brother’s shoulder tighter for a moment.

“Ferb, I think we got it – it looks like home!” the other Phineas exclaimed, as his brother gave him a thumbs-up.

“Right,” Candace snapped. “Then get out of here. And don’t let me see hide nor hair of you again, you hear?” She could feel her brothers looking at her askance, but oh well. She’d tried for so long to keep them from seeing this side of her, but that failed and now they were going to have to just accept it. This how the world worked.

“Sure?” the other Phineas replied, looking back over his shoulder at her. His gaze faltered for a moment before growing more cheerful again. “Well, thanks everyone. Hey, where’s Per – oh, that’s right.” His eyes dropped to the floor.

Candace had not yet realized the possibility that these duplicates had brought over a duplicate of Perry, too. The idea of it made her blood run cold. One Perryborg was bad enough, and she’d nearly died enough times that two of them seriously cast her survival in question. Maybe there was still someway they could get ahold of this other Perry, too. Get ahold him before Doofenshmirtz and then get rid of him. Kill him themselves if that would be what it would take.

It would be a merciful fate compared to what Doofenshmirtz would do to him anyway.

Just at the moment, the ancient television monitoring the Doofen-channel broke into song. Gretchen started, and every head in the room swiveled to face it at the sing-sung words.

“Doofenshmirtz Evil News Update!”

This was never going to be good.

“This just in,” a NORMbot read in it’s cheery monotone. “Our supreme leader has just announced the capture of public enemy number one, Perry the alternate-dimension platypus!” A picture was flashed, and Candace died a little more inside. They were already too late, then? The window of opportunity was closing, and it was closing very fast. “I guess we won't be seeing him any more, except as a platyborg. It's 3:30, we now conclude our broadcast day.”

Candace pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses farther onto her face as Doofenshmirtz’s voice screamed something about going to bed from the television. This whole day was just one disaster after another, wasn’t it? And she thought last year’s raid on the central smokestack had been a screw-up.

“We’ve got to save him!” Other-Dimension Phineas was whining.

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, no. Too risky. You two have to get back to your own dimension.” She huffed out a breath, hoping that the ‘whether you like it or not’ sentiment would be pretty clearly understood.

Unfortunately, she’d underestimated just how dense these alternate dimension brothers of hers were.

“We’re not going anywhere without our platypus!” Other Phineas repeated, looking like he was about to pitch a hissy fit. Candace hadn’t seen such a pathetic display in years, and it certainly wasn’t helping her mindset here. If there was one thing she hated, it was people who couldn’t leave well enough alone. It just attracted attention and… actually, hang on.

“I thought you said he was just using you as a cover?” Buford asked in the background, leading to some long spiel by Other Phineas about ‘feelings’ or somesuch nonsense. Candace wasn’t so much concerned with any of that as she was with the idea of attracting attention. Not towards the Resistance or her brothers – away from them.

It wouldn’t be difficult to do, she didn’t suspect.

Other Phineas was still rambling on his shtick, ending with some kind of declaration about going back for Perry.

“Well then,” she said disinterestedly, well aware that her soldiers were waiting for her word on the matter anyway. “You’re on your own.” And they would attract the attention, and there would be a small window… yes, it just might work. Doofenshmirtz’s obsession with tracking down and having his sadistic fun with denizens of alternate dimensions… he might drop his guard over it. How had this not occurred to her before?

“Fine, just tell us where Doofenshmirtz keeps his prisoners,” the duplicate retorted.

“We have to help them!”

Candace blinked. That – that was her own brother. She looked down at him disbelief, astounded that he’d dared to contradict her, even in this manner which was barely dignified of the term at all. “No, we don’t.”

He shrank under her stony gaze, swallowing hard. “Yes we do, remember how we felt when our Perry disappeared?”

Yes, Candace remembered. How could she have forgotten? She could remember that day as if it was yesterday, all the years between the first day she committed to keeping her brothers safe no matter what and today seeming to have elapsed in an instant just as much as they seemed to have taken an eternity. Still, it wasn’t the same. Those two weren’t her brothers.

But these two were. And… well, there was no reason she needed upset her brothers any farther. Let them believe whatever they wanted – as long as it kept them content, and she’d be happy. They weren’t going to be able to see the carrying out of the plan anyway, and the rest of Candace’s soldiers would follow her orders to the letter anyway.

The plan wasn’t going to change, no, but what her brothers knew of it was about to.

She rolled her eyes, mustering her least gruff voice. “Oh criminy, I must be crazy. Alright. We can get there through the tunnels.”

Her brother’s eyes let up, and he let out an excited ‘yes’ so innocent and happy that Candace was suddenly completely confident that the lie had been the right thing to do. She was going to keep that innocence intact yet, no matter what.

But right now, there was a job to do. “Let’s suit up, people!” she barked, turning away from her brothers. Just a quick excursion through the hollowed-out sewer tunnels to get at the base of the city central buildings, and they could follow the ventilation shafts up to the fourth level there. The duplicates would never see it coming, and the chaos might be just what they needed, after all this time, to slip in and cut the dictatorship off at it’s head, in all senses of the phrase.

“I will try to keep it open for as long as possible,” Dr. Baljeet said, “But the window is very unstable, even the slightest disturbance could cause it to collapse-”

“AAAAAAAH!!!” A piercing scream ripped through the air, followed by a heavy thump as something tumbled through the portal, landing in a heap on the floor. Candace crouched, gripping her staff tighter, ready to pounce on the intruder –

“Hi, Candace.”

You have got to be kidding me right now.

Never before had Candace felt so ready to break something as at that moment. There were enough duplicates and troubles with duplicates already and now… this? Herself?

“You guys are so...” the other Candace started, but then hesitated for a moment, as if she was only just now realizing there were other people in the room. (Well, that wasn’t a very good sign, now was it?) “Wait, why are there four of you?”

Okay, okay, this wasn’t the end. There were still ways out of this. Maybe Dr. Baljeet could open the portal again? She looked over at him, ignoring the most part of the silly bickering going on between all these other-dimensional duplicates. But he was already shaking his head.

“It’s too big of a variation,” he said quietly. “Start – stop – start again? They’d triangulate our position in a minute. There’s nothing I can do.”

Candace snorted, gritting her teeth. “Then the plan will just have to work with three.”

“Hey, is that me?” the Other Candace suddenly asked, being dragged towards the sewer tunnel’s exit by her brothers. “I look good!”

Out the corner of her eye, Candace noticed her own brothers making motion to follow the duplicates, Her hand immediately landed on their shoulders. “Oh, no. You two stay here.”

Phineas pouted. “But we want to help–”

“That’s an order!” Candace snapped, darting off. She paused for a moment longer at the doorway. “Gretchen, you watch the two of them. Don’t let them out of your sight. I have… business to take care of with these duplicates.” She paused for a moment, mentally evaluating who could feasibly be trusted to come along. “Expect Buford, Isabella, and I to return before nightfall.”

Gretchen blinked. The hesitation hung in the air for a moment before she crisply saluted. “Yes, sir.”


	2. Day Zero - 0900 Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Updaaaate on a timely schedule!

With a last glance at her brother’s faces – already having seen too much today – she turned on her heel and followed the rest of the group through the dingy base’s stretching tunnels. Preparation would hasty, there wasn’t much time. The alert had surely already been already raised, if by nothing else, then the NORMbot that Buford had so sloppily downed earlier.

She was going to have to … speak to him about that, at some point, but not right now.

The minecarts’ engine spluttered angrily to life, coughing and hacking over the degraded fuel being fed it. A map, a few spare tools in case there were any mechanical problems, a coil of rope and a large boulder that would be perfect counterweight should some circumstance require. Only a precious few minutes had managed to pass before they were off, rattling down the tracks. The echoes of the metal wheels rebounded again and again in the dingy tunnels, reverberating to almost deafening levels, shaking bits of soil and rock down from overhead, showering the party with grit as they rode.

Candace pored over the map, keeping half an ear out for the duplicates’ idle chattering as she did so. From what she gathered, none of them really had any idea what was going on, and it was probably better that way. Ignorance was bliss, after all. The thought that they’d deprived her own brothers of some of that protection grated against her self-control, and she smoldered angrily at it.

It was in the past now, and there was nothing she could do about it. And these three were going to get their comeuppance anyway, likely in ways more inestimably cruel than even they deserved. She’d heard tell of the dictator’s obsession with ‘that sort of freaky stuff’ before, and she was confident that that Rodent-stein or whatever his name was had been telling the truth when he’d spilled the story. People – agents of Doofenshmirtz, who were barely deserving of that title in the first place – always proved remarkably compliant with her demands. She’d cut her teeth on hulking death droids, after all, and the experience was most useful for the art of… persuasion as well.

“…the underground entrance to his headquarters,” Isabella was saying.

Candace shifted the map in her hands, idly tracing out their intended route with her finger, in the off chance that appearances were deceiving and any of their duplicates would actually be any sort of use to them beyond bait. “From there, we go up the ventilation shaft. The detainment center is on Level Four.” She stopped there, leaving the rest of the plan unstated, but met Isabella’s eyes. The other girl nodded subtly, and that was that.

“And the snack bar is Level Five,” Buford added. “If there’s time.”

Candace rolled her eyes. This was the sort of stupidity that she really shouldn’t have to be dealing with right now. “Ugh, Buford.” She could appreciate his strength in a fight, but outside that narrow circumstance, dealing with him was really very much a chore.

Buford put his head down, muttering something about nachos beneath his breath. In another case, Candace might felt inclined to remind him that it really wasn’t worth it to go through the trouble of breaking into even more secured areas if they weren’t going to steal anything except luxury items, but she hopped up instead, using her staff to catch hold of a passing turnstile in the tracks and toggle its direction instead.

They were almost there, this was no time for pointless bickering. It would be best if she just sat far enough from Buford so she couldn’t hear his whining. Other Dimension Candace looked up as Candace sat down near her, her brow furrowing up like she was trying to think of something to say to break the silence.

“So…” she started. “If there's another me, and another them, then there must also be another Jeremy Johnson here, right?”

“Huh?” The hair on the back of Candace’s neck prickled with warning again. The possibilities of spies or subterfuge were not entirely impossible, nor would they be unprecedented. It would be best to be reserved in such a case – though not so reserved that she was clearly hiding something. “Oh yeah, Johnson. Jeremy. Leads a three-man strike team on the north side. Good soldier.”

Other Candace frowned. “’Good soldier’?” Her tone was rife with disbelief. “That's all you think of him? Don't you think he's dreamy, or cool, or even cute? Tell me at least you think he's cute!”

… now there was a sentiment she hadn’t expected. Perhaps unwisely, her worries of inserted moles began evaporating with the ridiculousness of the question. ‘Cute’? ‘Cute’ was – it was a feeling for her brothers. It was soft and gentle and all the things that didn’t bring autocracies to an end. The fact that Other Candace seriously raised this question, it certainly said a lot. She rolled her eyes. “’Cute’… doesn’t win the war.” She paused. “Kid.”

How old was Other Candace again? She didn’t look too much younger than Candace herself, but alternate dimensions could be weird like that sometimes, right?

“Oh. Well, I guess?” Other Candace didn’t sound very sure of herself, that was definitely evident. “But what do you guys do around here for, you know, fun?”

Now Candace couldn’t quite keep herself from looking over at her other self in disbelief. Okay, okay, other dimensions, different circumstances and all that… but really? From herself? It was kind of ludicrous. At least with her brother’s duplicates, she could see the similarities, but between herself and this girl – it was like they were two different people entirely. “Look, Candace, is it?”

Other Candace nodded. Well, always better safe than sorry.

“No offense, but ‘fun’ isn't really on my agenda.” She wasn’t even trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice at this point. Here was someone who clearly didn’t understand the sheer stakes of what was going on all around them – what had been going on ever since Candace could remember, almost. “You know, since Doofenshmirtz took over the Tri-State Area, even though I was a little girl, I've been focused on one thing, and one thing only, he's going down, down, down...”

“Down, I know.” Other Candace hesitated. “But what about BFF's, or slumber parties, or – or busting your little brothers?”

Candace raised an eyebrow, not knowing what half of those terms meant, but betting that she wouldn’t care anyway. “Busting my… brothers?” She snorted, her voice rising in intensity with every syllable enunciated. “I've spent every day of my life trying to protect my little brothers. I had to grow up pretty quick to make sure they didn't have to.” Was this what this girl was all about, then? Candace could teach her pretty quick why no one laid a finger on Phineas or Ferb if should prove necessary. She wouldn’t have expected it of herself, but a lot of her expectations of herself (even her other-dimensional self) were being broken right now.

But Other Candace ducked her head meekly, dropping the subject and scooting an inch or two farther away. “Gee. You make growing up sound like it’s a… bad thing.”

“It is what it is.” Candace shrugged. ‘Good’, ‘bad’… those concepts were nice and all, but they didn’t very well work in the real world, either. It was something she had learned long ago. There was only her brothers, keeping them safe and untouched. It was the only standard by which things could be measured anymore. It was the only one Candace still had. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect the ones I love.”

Other Candace opened her mouth, but a sudden rustling behind them interrupted her.

“Aww, thanks, sis!”

The sounds of her brother’s voice made Candace’s blood turn to ice in her veins. She whirled around, her fingers clutching her weapon. This… no. This couldn’t be happening. Not here, not now. She was going to kill Gretchen. “What are you guys doing here?” she demanded severely.

“We want to help!” Phineas announced cheerfully, and the look in his eyes instantly confirmed his words. It was who her brothers were, so earnest and innocent and… and she couldn’t allow it. Phineas and Ferb had lost the ignorance, and with that they were going to lose some of the bliss, too. It was for their own good. Candace’s mind was made up in an instant.

“Sir, we’re nearing the target,” Isabella called back as the carts’ engine spluttered to a halt, the train lurching abruptly as it began slowing.

Candace growled unintelligibly. “Don’t move!” she snapped at her brothers, springing up and jamming her staff down in the wheels of her cart. Metal screeched against metal, and sparks flew as the mechanisms ground to a painful halt. The train limped a few more feet, gently bumping into the stopper at the end of the tracks. They were here, indeed, the cold concrete of the entryway carved into the foundations of the palace looming all around them.

Climbing out of the cart, Candace glanced over her and her brother’s duplicates. It was such a good opportunity – one of a kind, even. It was a bait that she knew the dictator would never be able to resist.

It really was a shame.

“Okay, people, change of plans,” she announced coolly. “This is as far as we go.” They might never get another shot this good, but the risk was not one she was willing to take. Her brothers were here, and they couldn’t be allowed this close to the action. She would lock them in the basement with Linda herself if that was what it would start coming to now.

“We’re not gonna help them?” Phineas asked, his face falling a little, as if they hadn’t already done more than enough.

“No, we're going to get you two home. Where it's safe.” Candace frowned, cutting him off as he tried to protest. “Look, this isn’t our fight. It’s theirs, and you two shouldn’t have gotten involved.” She hit a button on the entryway, and alarm blared as the metal door slowly reeled itself upwards. “Maybe none of us should have.” She cursed under her breath. Somebody was getting in so much trouble for this.

“Hmm,” Buford commented, as the duplicates just sort of… walked blindly into the entrance in the most haphazard manner possible. “I don’t remember it being so dark down here.”

Candace’s eyes popped open, fear stabbing her in the gut so hard she almost doubled over. “Dark?” She drew her fingers across her throat hastily, making no subtle movement towards Isabella and Buford, who’d both frozen, stock-still and eyes locked on her. Phineas and Ferb, too, drained of what little color they had as the dictator’s voice that only ever played from the television ripped through the air from just inside the entrance, going on and on about traps and something else that Candace simply didn’t care to hear. She used the end of her staff to shove her brothers’ heads down farther into their minecart in a desperate attempt to get them into more cover and preserve what tiny thread of safety was left them.

This was a bad idea. This was a bad idea. This was a bad idea.

If something were to happen to her brothers…

She would die before she’d allow such a thing. The only thing to do was remain completely silent and hope the NORMbots and everyone else in the next room left without realizing any of them were outside. Couldn’t start the minecarts’ engine, trying to leave on foot would be a death sentence, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that the next room was jam packed with NORMbots and probably the Perryborg… far too many to attempt to take on with any real hope of her brother’s lives being snatched from this deathtrap before it sprung and killed them all.

She could tell them to run, maybe. Or hide, though there were precious few places for that around here.

A sudden commotion exploded in the room behind them, interrupting Doofenshmirtz’s prattling that had been going on for the last five minutes, easy.

“They’re getting away!” Candace heard him yell, followed by an absolute cacophony of metallic noises. It was a distraction, maybe.

It was a chance.

The duplicates – accompanied by a duplicate Perry, indeed – burst from the entryway, and Candace leapt into action, slamming her staff against the opener button as swiftly as she could. Alarms blared, the door fell shut with a thud, someone screamed.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” she hissed through her teeth again. “Okay, everyone in the cars! Go go go, Isabella, start the motor!” The ancient motor for the minecarts spluttered to life as Isabella yelled back a confirmation, but it was never going to be enough. Hopping down onto the track with her staff beneath her arm, Candace planted her feet and pushed with all her might on the tail end of the cart train. Metal scraped on metal and sparks showered as the unwilling wheels were shoved along.

The motor kicked in, the carts lurched forwards, she was no longer pushing the entirety of their weight. Picking up the pace as quickly as she could, she ran behind the accelerating train, adding as much force as was possible. A plasma cannon sounded behind her, a thick, goopy bubbling as something melted down into sludge, the whirring of NORMbot hoverplates flooding into her ears.

The train was pulling away from her faster than she could keep up now. Her hand was on it, still, but she was slipping, unable to get a strong enough grip to pull herself on board. Maybe it was for the best. She would plant her feet and hold off the bots as long as could, and let her brothers escape in the meantime. There was no other choice, the engine was humming and there was no slowing down now.

She grit her teeth, willing the images of her brother’s faces out of her mind as she let go of the back of the train. A hand suddenly grabbed onto her wrist – and another, and another, and another. She looked up, started. It was her brothers, clinging onto her, straining with all their might to hang on.

A burst of adrenaline ripped through Candace’s system and she sprang forwards, planting a foot on the rear end of the cart as they pulled her forwards, tumbling over herself and on boards the train.

Even before she landed fully she was back on her feet. NORMbots were filling the tunnel behind them, and abreast of their mass army was none other than the Perryborg himself. Candace’s grip on her staff tightened as she sought a new place to rest her palms that wasn’t so slick. “YOU TWO! KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN! REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING!” she yelled over the ever-loudening racket.

“But we never had any training!” Phineas protested, his eyes wide and face drawn with fear.

“Well, keep your heads down.” She reached and down and did it for him, nearly shoving him onto the floor of the cart. Her voice dropped a notch or two as she muttered bitterly under her breath. “Consider yourselves trained.”

The NORMbots were closing in. Though not by much, they were faster than the train, and there was nowhere else to go but follow the track. In just a moment they’d catch up, be within plasma cannon range. Candace’s eyes narrowed and she planted her feet as firmly as possible in the dangerously careening cart. “Alright, you rust buckets. Let’s dance.”

The first NORMbots drew near to the tail of the train, hoverplates glowing brightly with the speed, careening through the air just behind. Plasma cannons hummed, charging. The air whistled around her staff as she brought down on the first bot’s head, crunching through the metal skin like so much wet cloth, sparks and smoke spewing as it collapsed to the ground, tumbling away into the distance.

There was no chance to stop. People were talking behind her, the NORMbot’s threats, the engine of the train, the reverberating echoes flying back and forth between the enclosed walls of the tunnel till her ears rang with every impact of her staff against hard metal.

There was no chance to think, no chance to hesitate. Twisting left as a plasma shot singed past her hair, she yelled out the best plan that she had – the only plan she had. “If we can get to the north tunnel before they get to us, I can trip the security door!” It would provide a moment’s delay before it, too, was summarily melted, but every moment they could save would be precious. She grit her teeth, willing the minecarts faster. “Isabella, give us more throttle!”

“It’s all the way in, sir!” the words rode back to her on the wind. It was what she feared. There was only one possible advantage she had left.

“Alright, hang tough, this is going to get hairy.” The words were addressed to no one in particular, but it didn’t matter. There was no longer a point in attacking the NORMbots behind. There were too many within firing range now, and it only took a single shot to put her down forever. She scrambled over the carts and shoved Isabella out of the driver’s seat. “We’re not slowing down.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Can we make those turns at this speed?!”

“We’re about to find out.” At least death at this speed would be quick and probably painless.

She leaned over the side of the car, bracing as her pole rammed into a turnstile, vibrations rocketing up the length of metal and shaking her down to her bones.

Screams behind her, as the minecarts careened dangerously onto their side, the screeching of metal and metal rising to a whole other level of deafening. But they didn’t capsize. They didn’t capsize. The airborne wheels slammed down onto the track again, and the NORMbots lost distance, unable to keep up the pace round the corner. Candace leaned forward, barely daring to hope. “There it is. We should be okay if we can just hold off these…” A plasma cannon suddenly blared dangerously close behind her.

Whipping her head around, she braced for close quarters – but it was… it was those duplicates again. They’d somehow gotten ahold of a cannon and were shooting back at their pursuers. (Maybe they weren’t so inept after all? No, more likely just dumb luck.)

“Can we do that?” her brother asked from just in front of her.

“No,” she snapped. “Keep your head down.” And he practically shrank away. She turned back to track ahead – and the moment she had, a tremor went through the entire train. They’d been hit.

More screaming, and a sudden crackling of fire. The back of the carts dropped, and the wheel-less carts screamed in protest.

“We’re slowing down, sir!” Isabella yelled.

“Keep it on the floor!” The engine was going to overheat, it couldn’t handle much more of this. The NORMbots were gaining. The Perryborg was gaining. Thankfully she didn’t think her brothers had seen it closely enough to connect the dots yet. (Good.)

“It’s on the floor!” was the only reply. “There’s too much track left! I don’t think we’re gonna make it!”

It was an assessment that Candace had already made, and knew was all too true. “Everyone to the front car! We’re gonna have to cut loose these cars!” Immediately, Buford began crawling towards her, and she practically dragged her brothers out of their hideyhole and over to her side.

The duplicates tried coming too, but they were too far in the back. (A stupid place.) Fire roared, and the minecarts in the middle burst into open flame.

“The motor’s overheating!”

This had not been the plan, but it was possible it might still work. She looked at her brothers, internally wishing they didn’t have to see this. “Sorry, guys. You’re on your own.” A blow from her staff on the car-latch, and the burning cars separated, drifting off behind. She couldn’t hear the duplicates anymore. (At least they were gone now.)

Now for the security door.

“What are you doing?!” her brother cried, absolutely distressed.

“My job – protecting you two,” she returned brusquely, watching through the closing the security door as the NORMbots gave up the chase, seemingly satisfied with their prisoners. That was it, then.

No, it wasn’t. Nowhere was safe anymore. Everyone had to go into hiding. This wasn’t the end, but it was certainly the beginning of it.

“We – we have to go back and help them!” Phineas’ voice was quavery and filled with tears, and she could feel his warmth next to her leg.

Candace shivered inside, conjuring memories of a tiny, brokenhearted girl who’d only wanted to help from deep in the dark places of her mind. Sometimes… sometimes it was better to let go. “It’s not our fight.” She’d softened her voice.

“But we could’ve made it!” he stammered. “We – we all could’ve made it!”

No, they couldn’t have. Candace’s fingers tightened around her staff. No. Not everyone could make it. You can’t decide to save everyone. You have to decide who you are okay with leaving behind. (It was a decision she had already made.) “Or we all could’ve been … ‘captured’, and I couldn’t let that happen. These are the tough choices people.” She paused. What was that word that duplicate Candace had used? “Someone has to be the adult here. You guys are safe. That’s what matters.”

“But – but – but –“

She glared through her lenses. “End of discussion.” Isabella hastily looked back to the track ahead and Candace pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, standing still for a moment before joining her second-in-command. “This is it, Isabella.”

“Sir?”

“We’ve been outed. There’s no secrecy for us. Doofenshmirtz and the NORMbots are going to dig up every single pebble of the neighborhood looking for us. We’re probably on a dozen cameras by now. There’s-” she stopped herself.

“Sir.” It wasn’t a question anymore.

“How prepared are we for Plan Zeta?” The coward’s way out. And a dangerous one at that. Not that there was a choice anyway. In just the space of maybe ten minutes it had gone from last-ditch plan to the only reasonable option.

Isabella blinked. “Dr. Baljeet still doesn’t know. For all we know for sure, there’s not even any source of water outside the city walls. You’ve seen how nothing grows out there. The fallout levels are still off the charts.”

Candace grit her teeth. “There’s something out there, Shapiro. I know it. Dr. Baljeet calculated that this planet is how big again?”

“200,000 Imperial Doofanian Units?”

“It can’t be wasteland everywhere else. I…” she looked back her brothers and shook her head. “I know you don’t, but I remember. It wasn’t always like this.”

“Yes sir.”

“Wait, where are we going?” Phineas’ quivery voice came. Candace internally sighed.

“Away.” _I don’t know._

“Where?”

“Just… away, alright?”

“But…” Phineas frowned, his wide blue eyes drilling into her. “Candace… we … we just can’t leave those guys behind. What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’re… they’re-” Candace blinked, studying the walls of the tunnel rushing by. “-they’re going to be just fine.”

“Oh.” He didn’t sound too convinced, though, and sure enough, a moment later, spoke again. “Are – are you sure? It didn’t seem-”

“Yes,” she snapped.

Silence.

“Do you promise?”

Candace whipped her head around. “I… uh, I…” Her words fumbled over each other awkwardly on the end of her tongue. She really needed a drink. “Tell him, Isabella,” she growled.

Isabella’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir. Uh, yes. Phineas, they’ll be just fine. I – your sister promises.”

Phineas gaze never wavered from the lenses obscuring her face. “Do you?”

“Okay, look!” She couldn’t take much more of this. “I did what I had to do to make sure you two were okay! Is that not enough? Trust me, there wasn’t any other way.”

“I believe you, sis,” he said quietly. “But you always tell us to stay inside because it isn’t safe outside. Was this why?”

Candace’s shoulders slumped, feeling her frantic grip on her brother’s unbesmirched innocence slipping bit by bit out of her hands. “Yes.” A pause. “This was why. Because I could not and I will not let what’s about to happen to them happen to you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She grimaced, ghostly screams echoing in ears. “You don’t want to know.”

“But-” he started to reply, only to be interrupted.

“We’re here, sir.” It was Isabella’s voice, accompanied by a shower of sparks as the sole surviving minecart slid to an undignified stop a hairsbreadth from the bumper. She frowned dramatically. “I don’t think this engine is going to be getting us anywhere anymore, not after this.”

“It’s irrelevant.” Candace waved off the concern. “We won’t be needing it anymore after tonight, either.” She abruptly turned her back to her brothers, cutting him off before he could open his mouth any wider. “Everybody out of the cart. Isabella, Buford, you know what to do.”

“What about the northern strike team?” Buford asked, earning himself a sharp glance.

“If you want to wait for them, you can,” She ground her staff into the dirt as they walked. “We’ll send a message, but my loyalties lie first to my brothers, and that means that you’re going to be waiting alone. It’s your choice to make.”

He squinted furtively. “Right.”

She stopped walking, extending an arm and catching up her brothers too. “Get out of here. I have business to attend to.”

“Wh-” Phineas started, but she clamped a hand over his mouth, motioning for the two other Resistors to scatter or else she would give them reason to run away. When, at last, they’d finally gotten out of earshot, she turned back to her brothers,

“Alright, you two, listen good and listen fast, because I’m only gonna say this once.” She took a deep breath. “We’re heading to your home, and we’re getting the supplies we can carry without slowing ourselves down. There’s no way that a group as big as the Resistance is ever going to be able to get past the barriers without being spotted. They’re going to be our distraction, and me and you guys are gonna be scot free. You got it?”

(An endless wasteland was a pretty … loose definition of ‘scot free’… but it was the only thing left at this point.)

“Wait, we’re leaving them too?” Phineas echoed her, sharing some kind of look with Ferb. “But – they – do they know?”

“What?” Candace shook her head. “That’s not important. What’s important is that we – that you will get out safely.”

Phineas’ face took on a distinctly pained expression that cracked through the ice in her heart, fracturing it down to it’s core. “But Candace … first them, and now them, and … I mean …”

“Look!” she snapped with growing exasperation and an unpleasant guilty feeling from a conscience that she thought she had stamped out long ago. “I can’t do it, Phineas. I can’t save them all.” She hiccuped, her voice cracking out of nowhere, prompting her to drop to a lower pitch. “I can’t save all of them. I’ve got to focus on something that is … achievable. You see? I’m not invincible.” The scars beneath her skin-tight clothing bore occassionally-still-painful witness to that fact. “To get everyone past the border like that … it’d be impossible.” She sniffed. “And why do you care so much anyway?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t … I don’t know, exactly, I guess?” He shifted awkwardly, looking at their brother again, as if wanting help of some kind. “It’s just that … you always said you were trying to keep everyone safe and first there was the-”

“No,” Candace interrupted sharply, though she couldn’t maintain the harshness in her tone for much longer. “I never said _that_. I… can’t do that, Phineas. I try to keep _you and Ferb_ safe. And that’s hard enough – but it’s also just enough. Enough that I can do it and make it in one piece myself, too. Do you get what I mean?” She heaved a sigh, wincing. “Look, I … know. What you feel. I used to feel it too. But I learned. Learned that some things are just … not possible. Not for one person, not against an army. There’s a reason it’s called ‘impossible’.”

Phineas’ eyes dropped. “The other me said that he and his brother liked doing the impossible – that’s what he did for fun during ‘summer’.”

She scowled. “Yeah, well, good for them, then. I don’t know what kind of fantasy-land they live in, but that’s there, and this is here – is real life. And everything doesn’t just ‘work out’ like that, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because I am the one in charge, and what I say goes.”

“Yes, Candace,” he replied quietly. “I guess I… I understand.” He sniffled quietly. “I just… I… I don’t know. I guess I thought you were saving everyone. I thought you could?”

“Phineas…” she returned desperately, almost breaking in half herself at the contrition in his tone. “Look, I…”

“I know,” he said. “I … trust you, and I, well, I know you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have to.” He took a deep breath. “I just … I think about them getting hurt – the one that was me, and Ferb, and even the other you… and I – it – it … I feel funny inside.”

Candace blinked. A faint memory occurred to her of a little girl long ago, curling up on a couch and feeling all funny inside. A funny feeling that she’d never been able to name, and that she had stopped feeling long ago now.

_No. No, he’s right. There’s no other choice._

But there… there was. And she cursed her own knowledge and railed on her own brain, but it didn’t help because there was. One other shot – long though it was, it was still there.

_What would even be the good in that?_

“Where are we going, Candace?” Phineas’ eyes were drier now, and he smiled grimly at her. “The others… well, I g-guess they can take care of themselves. He did say he liked the impossible. I guess they’ll have to do the best they can without us.”

_NO._

“PHINEAS,” She snapped, the words coming out even angrier than she’d realized they would – but they weren’t addressed at her brothers. Still, they cowered away from her.

“W-what?”

“Never let me hear you say those words again,” she replied firmly. “You … you do not resign yourself to anything. Nor you, Ferb.” She ground her teeth until her jaw felt like it would snap. “I will not stand for it.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Oh, like hell you don’t,” she retorted. “You’re not resigning yourself to anything. You two get your rears up this tunnel until you get back to Headquarters. Tell them that I’ll be back shortly. I will be.” _If I make it out alive._ “There’s … there’s still a possibility I can save your little friends. Maybe.”

Their eyes lit up so brightly it was like a second sun had emerged in the tunnel.

“But you have to promise me to stay with the Firestorm Girls until I come back, okay? Just… promise me that, and I promise you that I’ll do my best, too.”

“Of – of course?” he stammered.

“Ferb?”

“Yes, Candace.”

“Good.” She straightened up again. “Now go – get out of here. If I’m doing this, I’m doing it alone. Putting myself in… this situation is one thing, but if that’s what it has to be, that’s what it has to be.” She shooed them away from herself, down the tunnel, losing with their retreating selves the same part of her soul that they always carried away with them when they were apart from her.

What was she even _doing_ right now? It went against every strategic and sensible nerve in her body, and the hair on her neck tingled at the very idea. But that tone in Phineas’ – in her baby brother’s voice, that… that was not something she was prepared to deal with. Her brothers were sweet and loving and innocent, and they wanted to save everyone with that boundless optimism they held. And by everything she held dear, if saving that optimism required her to travel to the very gates of hell, then the devil could expect the most unpleasant visitor he’d ever had.

The minecart engine refused to start again, and a cursory glance under the hood showed the spark plugs hopelessly clogged with soot and dirt. (Looked like she was walking.) It was just as well, might as well be extra stealthy anyway. She was going to need it.


	3. Day Zero - 1800 Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finallll update, yus.

There was no way to tell the passage of time in the dimly-lit subterranean tunnels (hadn’t they been sewers at one point?), but she counted out 11,482 paces before at least reaching the same platform that they had so hastily departed less than hour or two ago.

Pieces of NORMbot wreckage lay strewn about, and the half-melted garage door was giving off some kind of noxious fume that brought tears to her eyes. Active NORMbots however … there were none, something she was … well, it was convenient. Too convenient – either this was a trap, or there was something even bigger going on than even she had yet to realize. (But what could that be? You could never tell with Doofenshmirtz.)

Keeping her ears sharp, she crept into the darkness, poking about the space in front of her with her staff. But despite the twitching in her muscles and the tingling of her nerves… nothing happened. She was well and truly _alone_ down here – there was no trap to be found, even when she had walked clear to the back wall of the room.

Something else was going on, then. Something else, and something big.

She patted her knapsack, briefly contemplating plans. There wasn’t much there now, but there was _one_ thing. Her fingers curled around the dimensional thingamabob Dr. Baljeet had given her, saying that it might it come handy in case of emergency. This, then, was the plan?

The ventilation shaft cover’s bars bent under her grip like so much wet paper, the entire thing shearing away from the wall in another moment. Tucking her staff beneath her arm, she ducked her head down and crept into the cramped space.

A left, a right, a right, and then up for what had to be a couple hundred feet, bracing her legs against the sides of the tube.

Suddenly, she could hear NORMbot hoverplates through the walls. A lot of them. A _lot_ of them. What was going on – it was like an entire army of them was just … sitting in there. Somewhere distant, through maybe a half-dozen walls, a loudspeaker blared.

“ **It’s almost muffin time, sir!** ”

“Ooh! Muffins _and_ doom! My favorites! This is gonna be the _greatest_ show!”

 _Doom_. She didn’t have much time, but at least now she knew where to go. Downwards – due downwards, as soon as the shafts gave her option. She was crawling as fast as she could with the little space that was available now – but truth be told, it didn’t even matter so much if she was _successful_ as it did that she _tried._

At least then she could look her brothers in the eyes and tell them such truthfully.

Light shone through the tunnel at long last, and she found herself _finally_ peeking through the bars of another ventilation cover. From the inside, it was much easier to squirm about until she could punch it clean off and slide herself out.

An intense heat lurked below, and a massive stone monolith stood before her, leaving her mere inches of space between it and the smooth metal wall.

Close by, a Goozim roared angrily, shaking the entire room with it’s wrath.

Peeking around the giant gnome (what _was_ it with Doofenshmirtz and gnomes anyway?) Candace’s eyes widened.

“More guards!” Doofenshmirtz’s voice pounded out above her.

“ **It’s muffin time, sir!** ”

“You’re broken!”

The Goozim roared again, having cornered the hapless duplicates (where her eyes decieving her or was there one of Doofenshmirtz himself too? No, surely not.) and looking all too intent on scoring itself a meal. There wasn’t much time to decide, but it didn’t matter – she’d already done what thinking she’d had any room to do.

Bracing her back against the wall, she pushed with all her might against the gnome. At first, it seemed immovable – until it moved, the massive base creaking and the pointed top slamming against the giant TV screen with the sound of breaking glass.

Her legs were burning when the pressure relaxed, and the entire gnome began rapidly tilting away from her, teetering away off the edge. This was it, then. Deep breath.

No going back.

Someone yelled beneath her. Whipping out the directional grapplers, she shot them up and down, attaching the bases together and clinging to the tether for dear life as they anchored themselves down. Free fall, the gnome was off the ground now. Wind ripped through her hair. The steel cables strained beneath the weight.

“PHINEAS! CATCH!” she yelled with all her might. (This was his one chance.) Snatching the dimension thing from her pocket, she hurled with all her might in his vague direction. That was everything she could do for them. It was up to them now, and up to _her_ to get out of here.

Gripping the tether, she nearly screamed with the effort to swing the massive pendulum around. Her face contorting into a satisfied smile as it slammed into entire legions of NORMbots, crushing them instantly against it’s bulk. Plasma canons sounded, and chunks of rock began falling away from it.

Far below, the dimension thingy made a shockingly loud pop, that reverberated and filled the already cacophonous chamber with even more din.

“They opened another portal! Get after them!” Doofenshmirtz’s voice came, still from the screen, where his disturbingly larger-than-face glowered down upon her. His single eye suddenly locked directly _on_ her. “And her, that banshee-screaming girl! Get her too!”

Candace swallowed, bracing for impact as the legions of bots shifted in their course, setting their sights no longer safely beneath her. _This is for you, boys_. There was only chance to get out of here.

Her staff collided with the head of the first unlucky bot, crushing it in like a tin can. The gnome was too slow to stay on top of safely now. Stabbing her staff into the back of the next bot, she vaulted onto it. From one, to the next, the staff providing both a weapon and a mainstay as she struggled to gain altitude by climbing the ever-reinforcing crowd of NORMbots surrounding her.

Plasma cannon shots whizzed around her. Robots randomly exploded, victims of friendly fire, their scattered debris tumbling dozens of feet into the lava beneath.

… only dozens of feet?

She bit her tongue. _Faster. I have to go faster._ The next bot she stepped on and sprang off it’s chest like a diving board, meeting the one behind it with her staff outstretched. Metal hit metal and the staff tore clean through it like the junkpile it was. Then another, catching the cannon arm and swinging herself about, kicking off the wall. A backflip, and clinging to the back of a third. Planning for the fourth, propelling herself through air –

A searing pain ripped through her shin, as if her leg itself was being ripped out of its socket. Sizzling, crackling, and losing her momentum in mid-air. She grabbed madly for something, fingers finding rest on a NORMbot beneath her intended target. Tongues of red-hot flame wrapped around her sock, at their center a glowing glob of the molten liquid beneath her.

No more jumping. The pole swung, the droplet flailing off into the air, tears blurring her vision as she clung to the NORMbot with one leg and wildly swatted at the flames with her free hand. The suit was fireproof, but _she_ was not, and bright red blisters bubbled up on her palm as flames on her knee-high sock smoldered grudgingly out, coughing up enormous clouds of choking smoke as they did so.

Her ride wasn’t going crazy anymore, just sitting still in the air. It was a wonder she hadn’t been –

“OW!” A massive metallic arm crashed around her, it’s enormous digits crushing her arm to her torso. Unthinking, she grabbed ahold of the claw with other hand, ready to rip it apart. It was a jolt of lightning tore through her hand, her raw hand leaping back of it’s own accord, the smell of burnt hair and singed flesh tainting her nose. Something else grabbed her from the other side.

Something _else_ grabbed her.

There was no more leverage, nothing more to kick off of. She grit her teeth and swung her legs, but couldn’t reach.

There was nothing.

Nothing but her, NORMbot, and a whole lot of lava. Her eyes widened and she squeezed them shut, Dr. Baljeet’s words flooding back into her head. _Your skin will melt off your body, and your internal organs, too light to sink into dense magma, will burst into flame as you wallow about on the surface over the course of several minutes. Your eyes will, incidentally, explode from the immense pressure. It is a most excruciating way to go_.

 _Well, I saved your duplicates. At least I managed_ that _much_. She grit her teeth, steeling herself against the heat as best she could force her own nerves to ignore it. And it… worked, somehow, the air around her seeming to grow cooler, and the sound of the lava – no, wait.

Opening her eyes confirmed it. The lava was _actually_ farther away. Of course. (Doofenshmirtz would never let her die that quickly.) What was he going to do to her?

“ **The portal closed, sir.** ”

“Oh, pooh,” Doofenshmirtz-on-the-screen shrugged, seeming almost … to not see her at all. “Oh, well, time to start the invasion!” He disappeared off the screen, though a moment later could be heard yelling about muffins again.

But that was all Candace needed to hear anyway. Invasion. Of course, _invasion_. It all made sense now – why no trap, why so many NORMbots, why she was being ignored by her mortal enemy. Doofenshmirtz already ruled everything that there was _to_ rule – and that left only one place left to invade.

The other dimension.

This was… this was revolutionary intel. She had to get this to the Fire…

She had to do nothing.

She could do nothing.

She had tried, but it had not been enough.

Her story … her story was over.

She sighed internally, still struggling against the fast grip of the NORMbots, but rapidly realizing the uselessness of the attempt with what was basically no leverage at all.

This was the end of the line for her.

… well, not _quite_ , but close enough. Doofenshmirtz had been too distracted by the invasion even to order her torture (or, more likely, he knew he’d be too busy to be able to watch), and thus she found herself roughly pitched headfirst into a tiny concrete box with an immense metal door which promptly slammed thunderously shut behind her.

Escapes flitted instantly through her mind, and she poured her entire soul into the door (flesh with the wall) and the window (which was far too small to fit through in the first place) and even the floor (but the whole thing was solid concrete). There was … a cot. A _slab_ , more like it.

And there was a single potato, moldering in the corner.

And there was her.

It was hard to say how much time had passed, exactly, but even she could see a hopeless situation when it presented itself. And this… this was, indeed, it.

She opened her knapsack and treated her burnt palm as best she could. No bandages, they would interfere with her ability to manipulate her staff in a fight. (Like that would be useful in here.)

And she… also sat down.

 _This was my fault_.

Of course it was. But… what could she have done differently? Been more harsh with her brothers?

 _No_.

Been more harsh with those duplicates?

 _How, exactly? Killed them where they stood – in front of my brothers? Not hardly_.

Somehow have been in a better situation before the started?

 _I guess_. _If I’d just moved Phineas and Ferb into a different safe-house, then none of this might have happened._

That made sense. Of course, she couldn’t have _known_ that… but maybe she’d ought to have, in some way. She _was_ supposed to protect them, after all, and wasn’t that a part of that job that had been sacred to her for as long as she could remember?

 _So I failed_.

Of course.

“This is just beautiful,” she snarked bitterly to no-one. “I decide to do the ‘right’ thing, and I end up in a _cell_.” She looked out the barred window, but couldn’t see much aside from a few smokestakes in the distance. “Well, at least my brothers are safe…?” _For how long? Without me?_

They would be safe. They had to be. She … they had to be.

She slammed herself down on the cot and hurled the potato against the floor, effortlessly catching it on the rebound. The impact exploded into her burnt palm, but she wrinkled her nose and ignored it. “What _lesson_ am I supposed to be learning here?”

Her voice echoed in the tiny space, and she wondered vaguely about dehydration and other dismal things crowding at the entrance of her mind. And to think, that top it all off, she hadn’t even managed to put a _dent_ in Doofenshmirtz’s war machine. No, to the contrary, even right now –

_click_

Something clicked – the door. Before there was so much as a chance to even question it, the massive cast-iron monstrosity squeaked open, and a vaguely familiar blonde fellow strutted in. His uniform spoke more words than his mouth did – though the latter spoke too, after a moment.

“I’m Jeremy Johnson. I’m here to rescue you.”

Ah, of course. Candace squinted. “Johnson, Jeremy.” She recognized him now – though the bigger question was how he had _gotten_ in –

“Yes, sir.” He nodded, saluting. “And I also picked a couple new recruits.”

Too many surprises today, and she was about done with them. So it was that, upon seeing that it was none other than _her brothers_ who walked into the room, decked out in what looked like too-big Resistance uniforms, she could only muster a deep internal sigh. (And to think she’d been so confident in her abilities to keep her brothers out of danger. If nothing else, this would _certainly_ teach her otherwise.)

“We figured out a way to bypass the entire security grid, it was cool!” Phineas was saying, but his words were mostly falling on deaf ears.

She scowled. Regardless of her own failings, others still had to answer for their trespass. “What – you brought my little brothers? Are you out of your _mind_ , soldier?”

Johnson blinked, his face twitching ever so slightly. “I didn't know they were your brothers… but I should've known. They're smart and courageous, just like you.”

Some sort of scathing retort was on the tip of Candace’s tongue, but she stalled to a halt a mere second before letting it loose, suddenly at a loss at the words. Had he … what was this, then? Some part of her mind flicked back to her brief conversation with her duplicate self. _Oh_. This must be what she’d been talking about? She frowned. “You think I’m ‘smart’ and ‘courageous’?”

Maybe a bit too sarcastic still, because he drew up, his facing smoothing over. “Well, yeah. Uh, sir.”

What was she even doing? This was a patent waste of time, and of all places? She grit her teeth. “Um. Good work, soldier.”

“We should probably get out of here while we can,” he continued, his voice now stolid and distant as he reached into his pocket and handed her pair of sunglasses. (Good, she’d lost hers in the fight with the NORMbots.) “Most of the Normbots are away in the other dimension, we can slip away pretty easily.”

And just like that, her confused thoughts on her duplicate’s words and trying to figure out what was going on with Johnson directly complimenting her vanished like so much smog in the wind. Of course.

The _invasion._ It’d not been long – it was probably going on full-scale, still.

“The Normbots are in the other dimension?” she echoed, getting final confirmation. “This isn't the time to escape. This is the time to make our move!” She put the new glasses on, a feeling of relief sweeping over her as the lenses slid over her eyes. “Let's go!”

“Yes, sir!” the others exclaimed, wheeling about.

“Boys, wait,” she interrupted, motioning Johnson to head out without them. She sucked in a deep breath. “Thanks for rescuing me. I – I'm really proud of you both.” Kneeling down, she pulled them both into a hug, at once terrified and satisfied that at last she could hug them both without needing to touch the disgusting fabric of Dooferalls. And they really _had_ done it, too. A good job, more than she would have expected, but … of course they had.

They were her brothers. And it wasn’t like she had anywhere to send them to anyway. For right now, at least, the safest place for them would be right by her side. (She wouldn’t have had it any other way.)

“And we’re proud of you too,” Phineas replied. “… sir.”

Candace flinched involuntarily.

“I got nachos! Who wants some?” And now Buford was here. Of course. “Nobody?”

“Get out of here, Buford,” she snapped, standing up to follow him out. Stopping at the door, though, she turned back to her brothers, following eagerly along. “Phineas … don’t call me that.”

“Oh, but…?”

“Just don’t.” She jerked her thumb over shoulder. “Now come on. You two better stick close to me. This is going to be hairy in… a number of ways.”

They nodded, and he reached to salute, but her staff was already in motion, intercepting the move before his arm was more than halfway up. “No. Now let’s go.”

* * *

Chaos. So much chaos. But the NORMbots left behind were vanishingly few in number, and Candace fought as hard as she was capable of pushing herself.

The factory district was in flames now, as she was told by Isabella upon the woman showing up – misfiring plasma cannons directly into a furnace. Uncontrolled fires ripped through swaths of the city like a tinderbox, demolishing acres’ worth of supplies and warehouses for Doofenshmirtz’s war machine.

The palace’s entrance was deserted, the gates forced and the stately building itself stormed at long last.

At _long last_. Her grip tightened on her staff as it shattered through the reinforced glass doors guarding the stairwell upwards.

They were still few, but the NORMbots were now _fewer._ The Firestorm Girls spread the word, and the people of Danville swarmed to fill the empty ranks of the Resistance, taking up arms and doing battle with the lingering oppressors with rocks and bricks and empty boxes of rations.

An aura of panicked urgency permeated the very air through the city, rocked with the desperate struggle for it’s own survival. The Doofen-trains ground to a halt, self-destructing one by one as their computers detected the power grid crumbling around them.

The NORMbots mysteriously all lost power and exploded. The damage to the city’s infrastructure was complete. The Girls found a man who claimed to have been a political prisoner of Doofenshmirtz, saying he was once a highly-valued military official of some kind.

And, at last… they found _it_.

To say, the portal – the portal into the other dimension, almost directly in the center of the sprawling palace complex.

Doofenshmirtz was… just… _right there_. Casually stepping through the portal as if without a care in the world.

“Ah, home,” he was saying, clinging to some kind of toy. “It’s good to be…” His speech trailed off upon seeing the Girls. “Uh-oh.”

“Book him, ladies!” the old man declared, and Candace rolled her eyes. The Girls had grabbed dictator anyway, and she couldn’t … she couldn’t feel anything at all about it. Something inside her was … different, but it was impossible to say what.

“You know, my crimes against humanity had just completely slipped my mind,” Doofenshmirtz whined as he was dragged away.

Candace only stood and stared.

She walked with the rest of her group through the portal because … what else was she supposed to do? Her entire brain had kind of… shut down.

“Hey, did you guys just see that? I totally saved Danville!” her duplicate self was yelling beyond it.

“Good work, soldier,” Candace responded automatically, earning herself a strange look. But the duplicate Candace only shrugged.

“So, what will _you_ do now?”

“Well.” Her tongue was utterly numb. “I haven't thought of anything but busting Doofenshmirtz for years. I don't know.” That was true. She… well, she _was_ the leader of the Resistance. But what was there left to resist anymore?

“Well, I know what interests _I’d_ pursue,” the duplicate returned, smirking, and pointing in the direction of the portal as Johnson strode out of it.

Ah, right, of course. She was supposed to ‘party slumber’ with him or something. Her brain rejected the idea automatically, but… nothing popped into her head to fill the void. “I’ll take it into consideration.” The duplicate tittered, and Candace reached desperately out to redirect the conversation. “And, and what about _you…_ Candace?”

Duplicate Candace _also_ seemed taken aback. She tilted her head thoughtfully. “You know, after all of this, I'm going to give myself a little more time to be young. It's not such a bad place to be.”

“You know what,” Candace started, prepared to lecture her other self for her carelessness when she’d been given the most precious gift to protect, but once again, her thoughts tumbled over themselves and failed to come out. Because … what _was_ she doing anymore? After this? She’d put so much thought into the _now_ , and now … now the future was here. “… me too,” she finished lamely, which seemed to earn her an approving smile at any rate. Also a supremely awkward hug that she hesitatingly returned only to somehow feel like she’d just betrayed something somehow.

“Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for teaching us all about summer,” her brother spoke up from her side. “You know, opening our horizons. And teaching Ferb classical guitar.”

Something moved nearby, and from a mass of some kind smelly yellow foam-looking stuff rose the … the Platyborg.

Candace snatched her staff into a more ready position, dropping into a crouch.

“Uh-oh.”

But the Platyborg, the artificial monstrosity created solely to do evil, the Doofenshmirtz-controlled automaton that had singlehandedly been the reason behind the long brown mark that Candace streaked from her left collarbone and down her back, it… it dropped to it’s four legs.

And it chattered.

 _Deception. Lies_. _A trick. A trap_.

Her brother was running towards it before she’d had the presence of mind to so much as move.

“Hey, it's our Perry! Looks like the evil was fried right out of him!”

Candace blinked, her eyes flickering towards the sparking electrical outlet on the wall just behind the animal. (If it could even be called that anymore.)

“Sorry he's mostly made of metal now,” duplicate Phineas said.

“Are you kidding? That makes him extra cool! Thanks so much guys!” Her brother was thrilled, and despite her own misgivings, she did… she did nothing.

“I’m glad we could help.”

It was an informal parting greeting, but it was enough for Candace, and she turned on her heel and strode back through the portal. As she’d expected, the rest of the group followed in tow. The … the Platyborg was on his four feet the whole time.

 _Except when he wasn’t_. And she saw, out the corner of her, him reach up and leave a silent salute towards his dimensional duplicate.

She’d known that. And it was all the more reason to be wary of the quote unquote ‘evil-free’ Platyborg. She glared at him through her lenses and put her hands on her brother’s shoulders, pulling them a bit more closely towards as the portal closed for what would (hopefully) be the final time.

Something still wasn’t right with that animal, she could feel it. She scowled again as Isabella came up, wanting to give her a full-scale report. Which Candace _did_ need, but… not right now.

“Hold, soldier,” she said, waving the woman off. “You take my brothers back to Headquarters, make sure they’re safe and tended to. I have… some business to take care of.” She looked at her brothers. “I’ll be back soon.”

Phineas and Ferb looked at each other, but at last they nodded, smiling brightly. “Okay, then. Come on, Perry!”

“-no,” She interrupted, halting the Platyborg midstride. “He is coming with me. We’re going to… make sure he’s okay.”

“Oh.” Phineas’ eyes widened. “But, Candace, I-”

“Phineas,” she cut him off. “After everything today… just trust me on this, okay?”

He blinked, then smiled. “Okay.”

She breathed a sigh of relief as they walked away, and waited for them to get out of earshot before she turned down to the Platyborg. “You.”

It looked up at her, and she grimaced.

“I’ve got my eye on you, ya hear? Don’t you _dare_ try anything funny. If I so much as _catch_ you alone with my brothers…” the scar on her back tingled again. “You know what I’m capable of.”

The Platyborg’s mostly metal face wasn’t able to move much, and she was bad at reading emotions anyway.

“Right.” She huffed out her nostrils.

“What are you doing?” It was the older man again. “That’s Perry the Platypus! He’s our… was our best agent. Before… you know, all this. But it matters not! We will soon be back on top again.”

“Excuse me?” Candace echoed. “I don’t think _you_ will be doing anything.”

“Now, now, young lady,” he returned. “I’m a decorated major, you see? And… though I won’t deny that what you did was useful – it’s over now. The war is over. Look!” He gestured towards the shattered windows of the palace room they were in, at the vast cityscape below. “No more Doofenshmirtz. Ever.”

He rambled on for a few more moments, but Candace wasn’t listening. She was … staring. Out the window, at the darkening cityscape. The raging fires still visible in the factory districts, the torn up streets, the smog-choked skies.

She blinked, and suddenly that desperate void in her brain and her soul didn’t feel so gaping anymore.

“Shut up,” she said brusquely.

“Say _what_?” he seemed taken aback. “Look, you’re a child. I’m an adult. Let me handle this, alright?”

“No,” she said firmly, turning around to face him. “Maybe I _am_ a child, then. But you know what? You failed to us safe ‘before’, and I definitely don’t trust you to do it now. This is my job, and this is what I do. I...” she paused, and the words never felt so right as before. “I have to keep my brothers safe. I have to make this city safe for _them_. Doofenshmirtz may be gone, but…”

She glanced down at the Platyborg, who was now standing on two legs next to her, and involuntarily shuddered.

She glanced at the Firestorm Girls still waiting for her to return to Headquarters.

And she glanced at the remnants of the dystopian regime spread all around below, freed from their dictator and languishing under the sudden vacuum of power. What would happen now?

She turned back to the old man. She didn’t know – but it was up to her to be on top of it anyway.

“Doofenshmirtz may gone, but trust me, old man. This war isn’t over yet.”


End file.
